Book Reviews
The Diaries of George Washington. Edited by Donald Jackson.
(Charlottesville: The University Press
of Virginia, 1976. Vol. I, 1748-65, v
+ 373p.; Vol. II, 1766-70, xvi +
374p.; illustrations, maps, notes, bib-
liography, index. $15.00 each.)
These two volumes mark the beginning of
the most massive historical
editing project in the nation's
history-the writings of George Washington. At
the same time they represent the acme in
the efforts of the National Historical
Papers and Records Commission's efforts
to publish the papers of the
founding fathers of this Republic.
Editor Donald Jackson, Associate Editor
Dorothy Twohig, and their staff
have achieved the highest standards of
historical editing in the manner begun
by Julian P. Boyd with The Papers of
Thomas Jefferson. Since the first of
Boyd's volumes appeared in 1950, the
papers of Benjamin Franklin, John
Adams, Alexander Hamilton, James
Madison, George Mason, Robert Morris,
John Marshall, John Jay, and Nathanael
Greene have begun publication.
After years of lavish subsidies,
long-term commitments, and obsessions for
thoroughness and accuracy, only the
Mason project has reached completion.
The quest for definitive editions has
gone so far as to result in Boyd
publishing a whole book about an
incident in Hamilton's life which
tangentially affects Jefferson. This has
to be the ultimate in footnotes. In
twenty-five years the Jefferson papers
have reached nineteen volumes and we
are only up to 1791. At the present pace
it will take a hundred volumes and at
least two lifetimes to edit them; and
the Washington papers are even more
voluminous!
We have reached the point where one
questions the efficacy of these efforts
at saturation scholarship. After all, in
1925 John C. Fitzpatrick edited the
Washington diaries in four volumes and
little new textual material is added
here. Only the modern annotation expands
this edition to an expected six
volumes. One can legitimately argue that
any additions or corrections to
Fitzpatrick could have been noted in The
Papers of George Washington
which are forthcoming.
One must compliment the editorial staff
for an excellent job. The notations
are usually complete, they add to the
understanding of the text, and they
effectuate the editors' quest to make
Washington and his associates "come
alive." Here we see in a very
intimate way Washington the agricultural
experimenter, the weather observer, the land
speculator, the breeder of
hounds and fox hunter, and the friendly
neighbor. Most of the diary entries
are curt, seldom making any judgmental
comment. On March 2, 1762, he
broke this reserve and wrote: "Mr.
Clifton came here today, & under
pretence of his Wife not consenting to
acknowledge her Right of Dower
wanted to disengage himself of the
Bargain he had made with me for his Land
. . .and by his Shuffling behaviour on
the occasion convinced me of his being
the trifling body represented" (I, p.250).
These two volumes include his journals
for various trips of which his
western journeys of 1753-1754 and 1770
contain observations on Ohio.
Always on the alert for good farm land, he noted 4,000
acres in Meigs County
that caught his fancy: "This is a
good Neck of Land the Soil is generally
282 OHIO HISTORY
good; & in places very rich.... Upon
the whole a valuable Tract might be
had here" (II, p.309).
Because of the editorial excellence, it
is a a reviewer's delight to find a
minor lapse. The abbreviation MVAR (I,
p.279) is not explained in the first
volume's bibliography. The Maryland
family surname is normally spelled
Edelen rather than Edelin (II, p.235).
These insignificant slips only illustrate
the general zeal and accuracy with which
the editors proceeded. The maps
are excellent although they may have
been more convenient if placed at the
front of each volume. The selection of
illustrations exhibits a search through
books, public repositories, and private
collections that adds life to the diaries.
Despite reservations about the necessity
of this lavish edition, the result is
a finely edited, beautifully printed
definitive publication of Washington's
personal memoranda during his young
manhood.
Bowling Green State University David Curtis Skaggs
The Transformation of American Law,
1780-1860. By Morton J. Horwitz.
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1977. xvii + 356p.; notes, index.
$16.50.)
In October 1936 Roscoe Pound delivered a
series of lectures at Tulane
University which collectively became
known as The Formative Era of
American Law. Defending antebellum judicial decisions and state
judges from
what he regarded as an unwarranted
Marxist challenge, Pound argued that
"the pressure of new demands,
problems created by the development of
transportation, the effect of inventions
and the rise of industry in some
sections and the growth of trade in
others, called for new reasoned
applications of the technique in which
these judges had been trained to the
body of legal precepts and established
legal analogies which had been taught
them." There was no "Marxian
class struggle"; the Marxist economic
determinist could not "understand
an honest man."
Now some forty years later Morton
Horwitz, in The Transformation of
American Law, contends that if there was no Marxian class struggle,
there
was conflict between economic interests,
and if the legal profession was
"honest," it was yet a power
block aligning itself with emergent en-
trepreneurial groups and transmuting
pre-market common law doctrine to
serve the purposes of economic growth.
The public interest was in actuality
the self-interests of commerce and finance;
the political and subjective
utilization of law contributed to a
redistribution of wealth
Horwitz marshals a careful and
persuasive case. In almost every area of
private law-property, contracts, torts,
insurance-he demonstrates how
American judges and, to a lesser degree,
legislatures shaped and, if
necessary, abandoned the common law
heritage so that grist mill owners
triumphed over farmers, usurious
contracts were often immunized against
attack, and turnpike, canal and, in
turn, railroad builders were favored. And
in the end, circa 1850, having
achieved its objectives, eschewing further
change, adopting a defensive posture,
American law became "scientific,"
amoral and formalized.
The law of contracts and
employer-employee relations is but one of several
illustrations that Horwitz offers to
sustain his theme. As late as the early
Book Reviews
283
nineteenth century, English and American
law retained the vestiges of the
medieval conception of just value, often
assumed the inequality of the parties,
spoke in terms of master-apprentice, and
characterized the employer's
obligation as in loco parentis. Judges
intervened to void contracts that,
according to their lights, were a poor
bargain. But not for long. Under the
pressure of a market economy and of dominant
economic exhortations,
American courts looked for "the
meeting of the minds," presumed that the
level of wages included the element of
risk, and in 1842 Chief Justice Lemuel
Shaw's decision in Farwell vs. Boston
and Worchester R. R. established the
fellow-servant rule.
In 1936 Pound noted that the Marxists
made capital out of this
quintessentially capitalistic case, but
he also pointed out that Shaw, deciding
Commonwealth vs. Hunt during the same year, overthrew the
English
common law of labor conspiracy. Perhaps
because it is beyond the scope of
his study, Professor Horwitz does not
attempt to reconcile Farwell and Hunt.
More important, while he discusses the
power struggle between judges and
merchants to control juries and
supervise mercantile arbitration, he does not
integrate divergent interests among the
wealthy into his model of class
conflict. In that respect, in perusing
the Horwitz volume, let the reader
beware.
University of Cincinnati David L. Sterling
Elbridge Gerry: Founding Father and
Republican Statesman. By George
Athan Billias. (New York: McGraw-Hill,
1976. xviii + 442p.; illustrations,
notes, index. $19.95.)
This admirable and serious biography
represents a fresh look at Elbridge
Gerry, a man largely ignored, yet
profoundly involved in the formative years
of the United States. Gerry, signer of
the Declaration of Independence and
the Articles of Confederation, framer of
the Constitution, minister to France,
governor of Massachusetts, and
vice-president of the United States, was a
significant secondary leader during the
Revolutionary and early National
period. Despite these achievements,
Gerry has been labeled as a loner,
obstructionist, a principal
anti-federalist, enigmatic, cranky, rebel, political
crank, and eccentric.
His obscurity and unfavorable reputation
rest heavily on the fact that he
was one of the three men who refused to
sign the Constitution in 1787, he
seemingly disgraced the country in
France during the XYZ Affair, and it was
he who made his name a household word by
introducing the "gerrymander."
According to the author, Gerry is
remembered for the wrong reasons, thus
Billias sets out to rescue him from this
undeserved obscurity and reputation.
As the author states, "Gerry
clearly deserves a better place in history."
Billias's thesis is that Gerry is best
understood "in terms of his deep
commitment to a particularistic view of
republicanism." The core of Gerry's
republicanism consisted of six elements:
(1) his fear of militarism; (2) his fear
of centralization; (3) his stand against
factions and political parties; (4) his
conception of the relationship between
the rulers and the ruled; (5) his worry
about public life as a source of
happiness; and (6) his idea of a virtuous
284 OHIO HISTORY
republic. The development of these
themes are constant and traceable
throughout the author's work. As Billias
contends, "Gerry's life is significant
because it illuminates various aspects
of the unit idea of republicanism and
presents a picture of a republican of
the period in thought and action."
In this provocative biography, Billias
succeeds in rescuing his subject; at
least he clarifies and greatly softens
history's indictment. Through his
balanced examination, the author argues
persuasively and effectively that this
early patriot was consistent, a man of
integrity, and deeply committed to
republican ideals and consolidating the
gains of the Revolution.
As a work of serious scholarship, the
book has merit for the further
information it sheds on many of the
notables of the period. Biography is one
of the most popular forms of historical
literature and with this study Billias
has contributed to a broader and clearer
understanding of the many issues of
the formative years of America. This
scholarly effort is a commendable
addition to this field.
The volume is based upon solid research
and Billias relied primarily upon
the Gerry Papers, many of which were
previously unknown. Gerry materials
were found in many collections, both
public and private. A major collection is
located in the Manuscripts Division of
the Library of Congress.
The book contains ninety pages of notes,
many of which are explanatory
and interpretive in nature, and which
will aid the researcher. Adding quality
to the volume is an excellent epilogue.
The biography is primarily intended
for the specialist and the professional
audience but it should not be
overlooked by the serious history
student, even at the undergraduate level.
Ashland College John L.
Nethers
The Stamp Act Congress. By C. A. Weslager. (Newark: University of
Delaware Press, 1976. 279p.;
illustrations, appendix, bibliography, index.
$14.50.)
Amid the many articles and books written
on the American Revolution, not
one comprehensive account of the Stamp
Act Congress has been written prior
to this monograph. Taking aim at both an
academic and non-academic
audience, Charles Weslager tries to plug
that gaping historiographical hole in
a book which he states is
"principally intended for general readers" but in
which "historians may find much . .
. that is new." His treatment of the
Congress is in five main sections: a
narrative of events leading to the Stamp
Act; a colony-by-colony discussion of
the delegates to the Congress; an
account of the convention debates; an
annotated copy of the official journal
and resolves of the Congress; and an
examination of the reception of the
resolves in the individual colonies and
England. While there are a few bright
spots in these five sections and while
it is somewhat helpful to have this
information pulled together under one
cover, general readers will not find this
story enthralling and historians will
not find much that is new. An absence of
analysis, a poor historiographical
context, thin research, and stodgy writing
mar this book, leaving it short of being
definitive.
Weslager emphasizes two main themes: (1)
the delegates to the Stamp Act
Congress were not revolutionaries but
loyal Englishmen and (2) the Congress
was an important step toward
intercolonial unity. While there is little or no
Book Reviews
285
reason to dispute either conclusion,
neither is likely to prove very
enlightening to historians inasmuch as
both have long been accepted parts of
the Revolutionary literature. At best
Weslager is bringing professional history
to general readers; at worst he is
setting up strawmen and belaboring the
obvious.
A careful examination of the composition
of the delegates to the Congress
would prove enlightening to historians.
The potential for a significant
contribution is there; unfortunately it
is not realized. The nearly fifty-page
section devoted to the individual
delegates is a compendium of detail and not
an analysis-a potpourri of trivia and
not an insightful group biography.
Similarly, the discussion of the events
leading up to the Stamp Act reads like
a lecture designed for an introductory
survey class; it adds nothing to our
knowledge and is not exciting enough to
encourage neophytes to take an
advanced course. Even the journal of the
Congress, which through some fine
historical detective work Weslager
produces in the most accurate form ever
published, yields little of interest or
importance. While one cannot fault
Weslager for the delegates' intention to
keep their discussions out of the
official record, one can wonder if the
barebones chronicle is worth the effort
and expense to establish its accuracy
and publish it.
The strongest parts of The Stamp Act
Congress are the sections dealing with
the debates at the Congress and the
reception in the colonies and England of
the Congress's work, although these
sections touch little new material and are
thinly researched. The crucial issue
under discussion was how to justify
opposition to the Stamp Act-whether the
petitions to England should be
based on the special privileges granted
in the colonial charters to individual
colonies or on the inherent rights of
all Englishmen. The decision to opt for
an argument based on the rights of
Englishmen proved to be of extraordinary
consequence in subsequent years. The
resolves of the Congress, well
received in the colonies, had no
positive impact on the campaign for repeal in
England. Ironically, they may have had a
negative impact; many members of
Parliament already committed to repeal
did not want to appear to be
submitting to colonial pressure.
A few additional irritants detract from
the book: Weslager is too obviously
a patriot for a sophisticated readership
to appreciate; he has a strong
reluctance to use semicolons; and no
less a figure than Jonathan Trumbull is
referred to as Jonathan Trimble. In sum,
while The Stamp Act Congress has a
few redeeming features, it is hardly a
book one would recommend
enthusiastically to either laymen or
professionals.
University of Winnipeg Bruce C. Daniels
The Prairie State: A Documentary
History of Illinois. Edited by Robert
P.
Sutton. (Grand Rapids: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1976. Vol. I,
Colonial Years to 1860, xiv + 383p; Vol. II, Civil War to the Present, xiv
+ 426p.; illustrations, maps, index.
$5.95 each.)
These two highly readable volumes are
more than a history of Illinois from
the Ice Age to 1975. In some respects
they are a history of the Middle West in
which Illinois holds a central position.
While the subtitle identifies the work
as A Documentary History, it is
not a run-of-the-mill anthology of texts on
286 OHIO HISTORY
politics and war. It is a dramatic
arrangement in which essays by modern
historians are used to prepare a setting
followed by colorful eye-witness
accounts or the words of participants.
In addition, a number of maps and
almost eighty other well-chosen
illustrations complement the texts.
The work is divided into four parts:
from prehistoric times to 1818 when
Illinois became a state; "the
prairie years" from 1818 to 1860; "the Gilded
Age" to 1919; and the past 55
years. Each part is arranged in either three or
four topical chapters. Altogether
ninety-eight special accounts or original
narratives are included, averaging about
seven pages in length. Of course
Lincoln and Douglas are here, as well as
Eugene V. Debs and John P.
Altgeld; but so too are La Salle,
Charles Dickens, Mayor Richard Daley, Carl
Sandburg, and Marshall Field. One of the
most touching selections is a short
speech by an unidentified Potawatomi
chief. Social and economic topics,
such as farming, industry, and commerce,
are abundant for both urban and
rural life. More unusual, and to the
casual reader perhaps of greater interest,
is the attention given to cultural
history and human interest: the World's Fair,
"the year of the deep snow"
(1830-1831), literature, food, and baseball.
Unemployment and welfare, race
relations, minorities, political corruption,
and other topics of current interest
have been given due emphasis.
Editorial work is of the highest
quality. Each of the selections is prefaced
by a few lines of identification or
accompanied by a short footnote. Each of
the twenty-eight chapters in which they
are grouped starts with a page or less
of background. For the use of students
and teachers (the work as a whole is
designed particularly for high school or
college courses on Illinois history)
each volume includes a page of
"parallel readings" and a comprehensive
index. The scholarly apparatus is brief,
specific, and helpful without being
obtrusive. The physical make-up of the
volumes makes them a pleasure to
handle and read.
Athens, Ohio Harry R. Stevens
The Urban Threshold: Growth and
Change in a Nineteenth-Century
American Community. By Stuart M. Blumin. (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1976. xiv + 298p.; notes,
bibliography, index. $16.50.)
Professor Stuart Blumin has written an
interesting and thought-provoking
study that traces the change of
Kingston, New York, from a rural/agricultural
community to a small but vigorous city.
Unlike most other urban case
studies, which have concentrated on
communities in a frontier environment
or emerging large cities, The Urban
Threshold seeks to examine "the process
by which the typical American rural
community became the typical American
town" (xii). One might question how
typical it was, however, since Kingston
spawned two town centers as it grew to
urban status.
Kingston approached the urban threshold
after long, slow growth as an
agriculturally based rural village and
crossed it only after dramatic economic
changes of the 1820s and 1830s made
their impact felt. The major catalyst to
change was the opening in 1826 of the
Delaware and Hudson Canal, whose
108-mile route between the anthracite
mines of northeastern Pennsylvania
and the Hudson River terminated at
Kingston. The quarrying of bluerock
Book Reviews
287
sandstone and limestone, and the
development of a cement industry during
the next decade, augmented the growth
encouraged by the canal. The vital
transportation artery and these two
mineral industries transformed the town.
Kingston shook off its rural character
and plunged toward small city status.
Urban growth now focused on two distinct
but related villages in the town of
Kingston-old Kingston village and
Rondout, a boisterous new village that
grew up near the D&H terminal at
Kingston landing. Rondout grew more
rapidly than its sister village.
Professor Blumin examines the impact of
growth on the community, its
people, and institutions. Although he
attempts to trace and measure the
processes of change, he has greater
success in describing the end results of
those processes, providing historical
snapshots rather than motion pictures of
change. The local details are marked by
place and time, but the broad
outlines of this type of urbanization
are familiar-an increasingly
heterogeneous population (ethnically,
socially, and culturally), an expanding
and more specialized economy, a more
visable and active political and
governmental life, and a larger and more
vigorous network of associational
activities. Examination of the patterns
of participation in its formal
institutions leads to the expected
finding that the participator/leadership
group came mostly from the upwardly
mobile upper and upper-middle-class
residents. Nor is it unexpected that
this same group articulated the values of
enterprise and order as a means of
trying to control changes that resulted
from growth.
Central to Blumin's analysis is his
contention that urbanization enhanced
rather than diminished a sense of
community and bolstered rather than
weakened community action. Although he
often supports this thesis more by
affirmation than with hard evidence, he
does provide enough documentary
evidence to make it reasonably
convincing. He uses mostly conventional
urban history sources and nicely
combines traditional methodology with
quantitative analysis. His most
sophisticated application of quantitative
technique is used to measure the level
of participation in the community's
associational activities, the primary
finding of which is noted above. He also
makes good use of other community
studies and certain limited sociological
constructs to strike frames of reference
for his analysis of Kingston's
changing society.
Despite occasional awkward phrasing and
an overuse of pronouns "I" and
"we," Blumin's prose is clear
and his style lively. Perhaps the study's
greatest weakness stems from a scarcity
of data on certain topics and periods,
especially in the pre-urban era. This
leads Blumin to questionable speculation
at times, although he is always careful
to qualify his remarks. In addition to
providing the reader with knowledge
about the growth and change of
Kingston, New York, thus adding to a
growing body of knowledge about the
history of individual communities,
perhaps the book's primary value lies in
the many important questions the author
raises-not all of which he
answers-about the effects of growth on
rural towns that achieved urban
status. Hopefully, this work will
encourage studies of similar communities.
Local historians and urban scholars will
find it a useful addition to the
literature.
Wright State University Paul G. Merriam
288 OHIO HISTORY
Urban Slavery in the American South,
1820-1860: A Quantitative History. By
Claudia Dale Goldin. (Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press, 1976. xv
+ 168.; tables, appendix, notes,
bibliography, index. $12.95.)
Professor Goldin has offered an
intriguing glimpse of the econometric mind
at work. The strengths of her craft are
apparent: isolating and clarifying the
economic dimension of a complex historical
topic; locating and assembling
evidence (especially quantitative) which
fleshes out the economic skeleton;
the resourceful constructing of
surrogates and approximations where precise
data are lacking; and the testing of
basic hypotheses by mathematical pro-
cesses susceptible to replication.
In analyzing the compatability of
slavery with life in mid-nineteenth cen-
tury southern cities, Goldin scrutinizes the notions of
Richard Wade, among
others, who argued that urban conditions
eroded the servile relationship.
Those proponents of what Goldin
characterizes as the "push" theory con-
tended that increasing urbanization made slavery there
correlatively risky; in
that context, the fields of the rural
South beckoned as a convenient safety
valve. An opposing view, the
"pull" theory (espoused by U. B. Phillips,
Lewis G. Gray, and Charles W. Ramsdell
especially), hinged on the pre-
sumed suitability and proclivity of
slaves to agricultural labor and asserted
that urban slaves were drawn back into
that type of endeavor for which they
were thought to be better suited. Goldin
regards the "push" interpretation as
incorrect to the extent that a
necessarily parallel decline in the prices of urban
slaves did not occur. "Pull"
is a somewhat more satisfactory characterization
in Goldin's view, but she regards it as
disarmingly simplistic, fostering a mis-
leading picture of the skills and
diversity of urban slave labor.
The author unfolds a sophisticated explanation
(a "model") which ac-
counts for a fluctuating slave
population in ten southern cities across the four
decades of the study. She discerns a
movement of some slaves away from the
cities, but it was a selective shift
which left behind an increasingly skilled mix
of bondsmen. Goldin explains
convincingly that the "elasticity of demand"
for urban slaves was greater than for
their rural counterparts; such a state
was reflective of a greater number of
alternatives (free blacks and whites,
including immigrants) to slave labor in
the cities, a condition which made
urban slaves more expendable despite
their greater skills and the urban de-
mand for those skills.
Goldin is especially taken by her
revelation that the subsiding of slavery in
the cities during the 1850s was part of
a pattern of variability apparent since
1820 and was not due to institutional
inadequacies or mechanisms of external
control peculiar to the prewar decade.
She asserts, ". .. one can no longer
interpret declining slave quantities
during that decade as signaling the demise
of urban slavery" (p. 120). Were
the demographic and financial configurations
of urban slavery not governed by
anything other than economic rationality?
Goldin is suitably uncertain, though she
notes that, ". . . whatever the omit-
ted factors, they appear less
important in analyzing the broad changes in
urban slave population than the few
economic variables specified in the mod-
el" (italics added) (p. 115).
Goldin has obviously weighed most
heavily the data which was most sus-
ceptible to mathematical analysis. A
re-working of her doctoral dissertation
(directed by Robert William Fogel), this
study makes its leaps of faith from
the specific to the general in explicit
but occasionally disquieting fashion. As
Book Reviews
289
a foil to her argument, she reduces the
anecdotes and analyses of earlier scho-
lars to terse equations which she then
explodes as fallacious. But, in so do-
ing, Goldin has made a case for the
ongoing profitability of slavery in an
urban context, and her arguments, as a
result, are an impetus for her readers
to backtrack into those earlier
explorations for insights into the fears,
jealousies, and irrationalities with
which slavery, urban and rural, was im-
bued.
University of Cincinnati Gary C. Ness
Proud Kentuckian: John C.
Breckinridge, 1821-1875.By Frank H.
Heck.
(Lexington: The University Press of
Kentucky, 1976. xii + 172p.;
illustrations, appendices, notes,
bibliographic essay. $3.95.)
In the months preceeding the
presidential election of 1860 the Democratic
party split over the issue of slavery.
The Northern faction rejected Southern
efforts to include a slave code plank in
the party's platform and nominated
Stephen Douglas for president. The
Southern wing, holding a second
convention, adopted the slave code plank
and put forth John Breckinridge as
their nominee for the nation's highest
office. Douglas and Breckinridge lost
the election to Abraham Lincoln.
However, while this defeat virtually ended
Douglas' career, Breckinridge went on to
a rather brief yet productive career
in the service of the Confederacy.
Proud Kentuckian, a thin volume, is Frank H. Heck's chronological
narrative of the life of John C.
Breckinridge. Heck is professor of history at
Centre College, where Breckinridge
studied during the 1830s. He claims to
have worked with the Breckinridge
sources for over twenty years.
Breckinridge is interesting primarily
because his life reflects the personal
torment experienced by border state
politicians during the Civil War era.
Between the end of the Mexican War and
the secession crisis, Breckinridge
strung together a series of sparkling
political victories including the
vice-presidency at age thirty-five. Even
after his presidential defeat in 1860
Breckinridge held a senatorial seat
(beginning March 4, 1861) and seemed a
major force in both state and national
politics.
However, Breckinridge's career and
reputation realized an abrupt change
after the Southern states adopted the
ordinances of secession, while his
native Kentucky remained in the Union.
Since he spent most of his career
defending the slave holders,
passionately repudiating the Republican party,
and calling for limitations on the
powers of the federal government, he now
felt he had little choice but to resign
his senate seat. Following his
resignation, Breckinridge joined the
Confederacy, first as a Brigadier General
(he served in six major battles) and
then as Secretary of War. After
Appomatox he spent four years of
self-imposed exile in England and Canada.
In 1869 he returned to Kentucky to
practice law and enter business. He died
in 1875.
Heck's work is adequate as a brief
biography. However, his effort weakens
considerably when it comes to providing
any adequate discussion of major
questions pertinent to understanding
Breckinridge and his era. For example,
the reader comes away from this study
with little or no knowledge of
290 OHIO HISTORY
Breckinridge's true feelings about race,
or what political strategies were used
to keep Kentucky in the Union.
Moreover, Heck's tendency to
"worship" Breckinridge tends to detract
from an otherwise sound work. Despite
the Kentuckian's seeming lack of
concern for blacks, he emerges from
these pages as somewhat of a hero and
martyr. It seems Heck's long years of
studying Breckinridge, combined with
his teaching at the "Proud
Kentuckian's" alma mater has caused him to
portray his subject in a laudatory
manner. Most historians, I feel, would have
preferred more historical analysis of
the political and social issues faced by
Breckinridge, rather than this glorified
portrait.
Nevertheless, Heck's work does provide
an adequate overview of
Breckinridge's life and career; and
those interested in his era should find it
quite informative.
Arkansas State University John Waksmundski
Black Ohio and the Color Line:
1860-1915. By David A. Gerber.
(Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1976. xii
+ 500p.; notes, index. $14.95.)
Professor David A. Gerber of the State
University of New York at Buffalo
has prepared another excellent volume for
August Meier's series "Blacks in
the New World." Gerber synthesizes
disparate secondary sources
-unpublished dissertations and theses
and local histories-and memoirs,
city directories, census returns, and
the limited number of black manuscript
collections in what is probably the best
state-level study so far of black life
after the Civil War.
Gerber frames his study in terms of the
tension between the perceived need
to stress racial solidarity to improve
black life and the competing commitment
to complete racial integration. Gerber
finds that the generation of black
leaders that emerged in Ohio during the
Civil War and Reconstruction era
de-emphasized institutionalized black
self-help as inconsistent with the
elimination of race distinctions; the
generation that reached maturity later,
which competed with the older leaders
for political and social leadership after
1900, reversed these priorities and
looked to Booker T. Washington for
inspiration. Within this general
context, Gerber describes black politics,
religious and social institutions,
residential patterns, and economic life from
1865 to 1914. In doing this, Gerber
laudably tries to go beyond the literary
sources left by the articulate and
relatively successful minority of Ohio
blacks, utilizing mass data to do it.
Gerber's assessment of black-white
relations are especially interesting. He
finds clear signs of continued progress
in race relations through the 1880s,
with schools integrating and passage of
new state civil rights laws. The
reversal of this trend came in the
1890s, later than most historians have
thought, and race relations deteriorated
further after 1900 as an influx of
blacks from the South exacerbated racial
tensions. This insight coincides with
the argument of Gerber's mentor,
Professor James M. McPherson, in his The
Abolitionist Legacy (1975), that the northern retreat from racial
liberalism
during the 1870s has been exaggerated.
Concentrating on political, economic,
and educational institutions, Gerber
offers no description of black family
life, and perhaps for this reason, the
Book Reviews
291
people he describes rarely come alive.
Although he carefully notes changing
residence patterns, Gerber provides no
concrete, literary description of black
neighborhoods. Offering general
information on blacks and the economy, he
does not provide concrete examples of
working conditions. While he
describes fully church membership
trends, finances, and social involvement,
he does not describe a church service.
These are not exactly shortcomings in
Gerber's work, but the absence of
such information makes it more difficult
to read and harder to visualize the
black life he is describing.
Nonetheless, Professor Gerber's book is a
thorough and significant general study-an
important contribution to our
knowledge of black history that should
be emulated in studies of other states.
The Ohio State University Michael Les Benedict
A New Birth of Freedom: The
Republican Party and Freedmen's Rights,
1861-1866. By Herman Belz. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1977. xv +
199p.; notes, bibliography, index.
$16.95.)
Almost twenty years ago Carl Degler made
the astute observation that at
the end of the Civil War the proper
place of blacks in American society was
unsettled and ill-defined. Degler notes,
"For a full two hundred years the
character, the status, and the future of
the great majority of black men in
America were defined and molded by the
institution of slavery. Then
abruptly, within the course of four years of war, this
customary and legal
guide to race relations was completely swept away;
white and black men alike
had to set about establishing a new relationship" (Out
of Our Past, 1959,
p.209). At one level, Herman Belz's
latest book is an attempt to examine the
initial redefinition of the place of
blacks in American society, post 1865.
Professor Belz states early the theme
for his volume, ". .. this book
describes how and why the Republican
Party transformed a series of
expedient military steps aimed at
denying slave manpower to the enemy into
a civil rights policy that rested on settled
constitutional principles and was
intended to guarantee American
citizenship and equality before the law to the
freed slave population" (vii). He
reiterates this purpose in stating, "The
purpose of this study is to examine how
emancipation that was undertaken
for military reasons gave rise to
federal policies protecting the liberty and
rights of freed slaves and how these
policies eventually led to the civil rights
settlement of 1866" (ix). There is
no question that the book meets its stated
purposes. However, in assessing the
Republican party role in all this, he
demonstrates that the Republicans backed
into most of what they did; there
was no comprehensive plan, and
expediency and adjustment carried the day.
This book is clearly not for the general
reader but is an important
contribution to the scholar specialists,
particularly to the constitutional
historian. Belz's documentation is
thorough and convincing. His discussion of
state citizenship vs. federal
citizenship is especially enlightening. His
carefully drawn distinctions between
civil rights and social and political rights
as seen at mid-nineteenth century is astute,
as is his discussion of military
service as a vehicle in attaining
national citizenship. Further, he does
recognize that black leaders like
Frederick Douglass had a role in the
redefining of their status, even though
not yet a major force in party tactics.
292 OHIO HISTORY
His analysis of the differences between
presidential and congressional
reconstruction is revealing and adds
substance to the view of those historians
who have argued that the real tragedy of
reconstruction was its failure.
There are no major inadequacies in this
study, only minor points which
might have been better handled. For
example, the discussion of the black
codes and their importance in the process
of policy making remains
somewhat unclear. The impact of the
Freedmen's bureau legislation as a part
of Republican policy only illustrates
the lack of careful planning by the
leaders of the party. In effect, the
Republicans are always seemingly
responding to something rather
than initiating on the basis of a carefully
worked out strategy.
In sum, Professor Belz has made a
significant addition to his earlier study,
Reconstructing the Union (1969). Regrettably, the "new birth of
freedom"
was largely stillborn, and blacks then
and now can take little comfort in being
reminded that law, which precedes social
practices, is of modest value; or
better said, equal in law and not equal
in fact does nothing in terms of
achieving real social justice.
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse George E. Carter
Work, Culture, and Society in
Industrializing America. By Herbert
Gutman.
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976. xiv +
343p.; notes, index. 12.50
hardcover; $3.95 paper.)
In the last fifteen years Herbert Gutman
has transformed the study of
American workers. In the past labor
historians mainly examined the
economic functions and institutional
structures of trade unions, and in the
process scholars like John R. Commons,
Selig Perlman, and Philip Taft ig-
nored the social history of the working
class. In a reaction to this neglect,
Gutman focuses upon the lives,
ambitions, traumas, and community settings
as experienced by the workers themselves.
While Gutman is excellent at recreating
the everyday lives of workers, he
incorporates his descriptions into a
historical analysis that increases our un-
derstanding of the critical processes of
industrialization, immigration, and ur-
banization. In addition, he seeks to
understand the relationship between the
middle class and workers, the truth
behind the rags-to-riches myth, the role
played by blacks in the
turn-of-the-century labor movement, and the impor-
tance of millennial Protestantism in
shaping labor ideology and action.
This volume brings together several of
Gutman's essays written over the
last decade and a half. Ohioans will
regret, however, that one of Gutman's
finest essays, "Reconstruction in
Ohio: Negroes in the Hocking Valley Coal
Mines in 1873 and 1874," is not
included. Nonetheless, the themes Gutman
developed in that 1962 Labor History article-community
relations, the
dynamics of a strike, and the role
played by black strikebreakers-are all
adequately covered in the volume's other
essays. The collection might have
been improved, however, with the
inclusion of a thorough bibliography of
Gutman's published works.
Despite these omissions, this volume's
essays have much to offer. In
"Class, Status, and Community Power
in Nineteenth-Century American In-
Book Reviews
293
dustrial Cities," and in the last
two essays describing labor disputes during the
depression of the 1870s, Gutman offers
his path-breaking interpretation that
the middle class, local newspapers,
politicians, and police often sided with
striking workers and opposed the
dictates of the powerful industrialists. They
did this out of a sense of community and
an apprehension about the future of
their town in the age of industrial
capitalism. In Paterson, New Jersey, and in
Blossburg, Pennsylvania, for instance,
Gutman shows how this sense of
community solidarity mitigated the power
of large industrialists and aided the
workers during strikes.
Again using Paterson as a case study,
Gutman demonstrates the value of
community and local history in his
analysis of that city's industrial pioneers.
In contradistinction to Stephen
Thernstrom, who found little dramatic upward
mobility among the workers of
Newburyport, Mass., Gutman discovers that a
mechanic's skills made him
occupationally successful to the extent that "the
rags-to-riches promise was not a mere
myth in Paterson, New Jersey, be-
tween 1830 and 1880" (p.232). In
another vein, Gutman's analysis of the ac-
tivities of Paterson socialist and labor
agitator Joseph McDonnell does much
to refute Daniel Bell's famous
contention that American socialists were "in
the world but not of it." Instead,
Gutman finds McDonnell supported by the
community and able to play a major role
in lobbying for labor legislation on
the state level.
Gutman's long essay "The Negro and
the United Mine Workers of Ameri-
ca" rescues from historical neglect
the heroic figure of Richard L. Davis, a
black coal miner from Rendville, Ohio,
who gave his allegiance to his race
and to the labor movement. Additionally,
this essay calls upon historians to
reexamine their assumption that the
nineteenth- and early twentieth- century
American labor movement excluded skilled
black craftsmen to the degree as-
sumed by W. E. B. DuBois. Gutman
indicates that Davis and his cohorts
were influenced by a radical
Protestantism, but it is in his essay "Protestant-
ism and the American Labor
Movement" that Gutman most fully develops
the idea that a close relationship
between millennial Protestantism and labor
radicalism existed. This essay suggests
a counter-thesis to the static view that
Protestantism was a tool used by the
capitalist-controlled churches to disci-
pline a recalcitrant working class.
Drawing upon E. P. Thompson's study of
British working-class Methodism. Gutman
finds that a radical Protestant
spirit pervaded the ideology of
nineteenth-century laborers which gave them
an important legitimizing notion to
oppose the dehumanizing thrust of indus-
trial capitalism.
Thus Gutman decisively widens the scope
of labor history by drawing the
attention of American historians away
from mere trade union history and di-
recting it toward a general social
history of the working-class experience.
This is not to suggest, however, that
Gutman's work is uniformly excellent;
his method is often eclectic, and it
results in a failure to understand
methodological and theoretical questions
in their larger and more important
context. This problem is most amply
illustrated in this collection's lengthy
title essay, "Work, Culture and
Society in Industrializing America, 1815-
1919."
In this wide-ranging essay, Gutman
argues that conflict arises when work-
ers imbued with a pre-industrial work
ethic confront an industrializing or in-
dustrialized society. Such conflicting
value structures Gutman finds through-
out American history, recreated as
native Americans from rural villages, skilled
294 OHIO HISTORY
craftsmen, and new immigrants came into
contact with industrialization.
Drawing from a wealth of sources, Gutman
declares that these workers, all of
whom shared pre-industrial work habits
and cultural perceptions, rebelled
against an industrial discipline which
demanded that they perform according
to a time clock, at a speed determined
by management or on days when they
preferred to fish or celebrate traditional
holidays.
Gutman's discovery of an inherent
tension between pre-industrial culture
and work-discipline is a valid
observation that has been supported by the
work of E. P. Thompson, David
Montgomery, Merritt Roe Smith, Paul Faler,
Bruce Laurie, Alan Dawley, and a growing
list of other historians. But Gut-
man's essays deal with pre-industrial
culture over a longer period of time than
other historians and during a period
when many workers were already second
or third generation industrial laborers.
If tension results, as Gutman seems to
suggest, mainly from the confrontation
between pre-industrial cultures and
industrial discipline, then how can one
account for the continued sense of
working-class alienation to this day?
By exclusively focusing on the cultural
context of work, Gutman ignores
the arguments of both Marxists and more
traditional sociologists concerning
the nature of production in industrial
society. Marxists, for example, posit an
estrangement within the producing
activity itself because the worker neither
controls his labor nor owns the means of
production. If this is true, then
Gutman's thesis must be expanded in a
fundamental manner: the conflict is
no longer simply between pre-industrial
cultures and industrial society, but
between alienated labor and
mechanization, the division of labor and the pri-
vately controlled means of production.
The recent work of Montgomery, Stanley
Aronowitz and Harry Braverman
demonstrate that workers from
contemporary industrial cultures rebel in like
manner to their pre-industrial
compatriots. Like their pre-industrial
forefathers, today's workers resist the
demands of the time clock, the
drudgery of the assembly line, and the
general dehumanization of work; they
often attempt to reassert their control
over the means and methods of production
through wildcat strikes, slowdowns, and
sabotage.
Cultural conditioning, as Gutman
suggests, plays an important role in de-
termining a worker's relationship to
industrial discipline. The totality of the
experience of work and the recreation of
working-class perceptions must be
understood as reactions against
mechanization and the division of labor that
are mediated by cultural perceptions.
But what Gutman fails to realize is the
duality of human perceptions. Workers
from pre-industrial cultures also in-
ternalize wider cultural standards that
accept the machine and the demands
and culture of industrialization. In his
work on Lynn, Massachusetts, for
example, Paul Faler found a type of
rebel shoemaker who accepted the moral
code of industrialism as much as his
employer, but who also formed unions
and protected his craft interests.
As these specific criticisms indicate,
what labor historians need is a new
theoretical construct. Such a theory
must account for the inherent conflict
between alienated labor and the machine
process and must also accept the
key role played by culture in defining
and mediating the workers' reactions
to the division of labor and
mechanization. Until this dialectical relationship
between the process of work and the
workers' culture and ideology is dis-
cerned, it will be impossible to
understand fully the social and intellectual
history of America's working class.
Perhaps the contours of this process and
Book Reviews
295
history will be developed in Gutman's
long-awaited, full-scale study of the
American working class; but he must
first abandon his current theoretical
framework and try another.
The Ohio State University George B. Cotkin
The Democratic Party and the Negro:
Northern and National Politics 1868-
92.By Lawrence Grossman. (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1976. xi
+ 212p.; tables, notes, bibliography,
index. $9.95.)
Lawrence Grossman's The Democratic
Party and the Negro is another
volume in the series "Blacks in the
New World" edited by August Meier.
Grossman, a professor of history at
Stern College for Women of Yeshiva
University, produced his monograph as a
result of the work on his doctoral
dissertation at City College of New
York. The study examines the Democra-
tic party's "evolving political
attitudes" toward blacks in the quarter century
between the presidential elections of
1868 and 1892, and analyzes the reasons
for the metamorphosis of the party (ix).
By concentrating on the action and
attitude of the Democratic party
concerning the race issue during the last half
of the nineteenth century, Grossman has
made a significant contribution to a
neglected phase of the history of the
period. Since the Southern scene has
been adequately examined by others, the
author focuses on national de-
velopment and local politics of the
Northern region. Grossman's book
roughly parallels and complements the
studies of Stanley P. Hirshson,
Farewell to the Bloody Shirt (1962), and Vincent De Santis, Republicans Face
the Southern Question (1959), which trace Northern Republican policy to-
ward Southern blacks to the party's
ultimate withdrawal of commitment after
the defeat of the Lodge Bill in the
1890s.
The Democrat's racial position passed
through several stages. The party,
which had institutionalized anti-black
feeling in the 1850s and 1860s, was de-
feated in 1868 by adhering to its
traditional white supremacy position. In the
1870s while remaining unbending in their
opposition to federal intervention in
Southern race relations, the Northern
Democrats undertook a "New Depar-
ture" that pledged to abide by the
Reconstruction amendments to the Con-
stitution which gave blacks civil
equality and the ballot. From 1873 to the
1890s the Northern Democrats silenced
the old appeal to prejudice and white
supremacy, and competed with the
Republicans for black votes through pro-
black legislation at the state level and
by grants of patronage.
Grossman correctly argues that Northern
Democratic racial liberalism
blunted and finally defeated Republican
commitments "to safe-guard Negro
suffrage" (pp.x, 55). The
Democrats, therefore, played a significant role in
the course of Reconstruction.
The difference between the two parties
on the black question narrowed
after 1872 in the Northern states, but
the difference on the point of federal
intervention in the South remained. By
the end of the century black rights in
the South, although guaranteed by the
Constitution, were ignored and unen-
forced by both parties. The "New
Departure" was not a Democratic capitula-
tion to Republican policy, but a
strategic retreat which ultimately secured the
political victories of the last two
decades of the nineteenth century (p.170).
The blacks of the North gained
protection by state Civil Rights Acts and
296 OHIO HISTORY
guarantees against discrimination in
education but the Southern blacks lost
many of the gains of the Reconstruction
period (pp.62-63).
Although Grossman fails to relate the
race issue to the other Democratic
measures such as reduced tariff rates,
he has made a significant contribution
by his detailed analysis of the
Democratic politics in the Northern states.
Morehead State University Victor B. Howard
Retreat from Reform: The Prohibition
Movement in the United States, 1890-
1913.By Jack S. Blocker, Jr. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976.
xii +
261p.; tables, sources, index. $14.95.)
Scholarly assessment of American
prohibition has shifted from assumptions
that drys were social aberrants to a
hypothesis that they were in the
mainstream of American society.
Professor Blocker extends the latter pre-
mise by arguing that American prohibition,
unlike its European counterparts,
remained essentially a middle-class
phenomenon seeking to preserve social
and economic gains from attacks from
below (economic radicalism and im-
migrant pluralism) and from above
(corporate capitalism). Thus "a choice of
institutional means to solve personal
problems, when made by thousands of
middle-class Americans, created the
prohibition movement" (p.32).
Prohibition could have developed
differently. Leaders of both the Women's
Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and
the Prohibition Party emerged
from an antebellum abolitionist
tradition of broad reform interests. At various
times these organizations espoused an
extended franchise, dress reform,
anti-lynching, and government control of
transportation. The 1890s altered
the course of American prohibition. The
WCTU failed to join temperance
forces with populism, and the
Prohibition party ultimately rejected a broad-
gauge platform in favor of the prohibition
issue. Subsequent domination of
the Anti-Saloon League (ASL), with its
pragmatic approach and exclusive
focus upon prohibition, only signalled
the abandonment of a commitment to
social change. It is in this sense of
missed opportunities that Blocker mourns
the "Retreat from Reform."
Judicious use of evidence holds the
"middle-class thesis" together fairly
well. The monograph's real contribution,
however, is the analysis of the
sharp distinctions between the
Prohibition party and the ASL, based primar-
ily upon tactical differences.
Examination of the League's early internal prob-
lems highlights the difficulties
experienced in obtaining adequate funding and
competent personnel. Blocker shows the
League's uneven record of ac-
complishments, and argues innovatively
that the ASL began its campaign for
a federal prohibition amendment in 1913
from a position of setbacks, not suc-
cesses. His stimulating statements about
the Eighteenth and Twenty-first
Amendments more properly belong in a
separate article than in his epilogue.
But the "middle-class thesis"
also creates problems of focus and interpre-
tation. To some extent the study exists
in a vacuum. For instance, farmers
and laborers also vacillated between
third-party activity and working within
the two-party system. Prohibitionists
were among the majority who opted for
the latter. Blocker's emphasis upon
middle-class anxieties prompts him to
ignore the extent of liquor consumption
in America. Norman Clark's recent
Book Reviews
297
Deliver Us From Evil argues convincingly that alcoholism became a national
problem beginning about 1800, which
threatened the primary bourgeois
institution-the home. Blocker notes the
existence of a Home Department
within the WCTU and alludes to the
frequent pattern of alcoholism among
family members of prohibitionist
leaders; but his fixation on middle-class
status concerns leads him to overlook the
home, rather than status, as the
possible cause of anxiety.
Finally, Blocker's evidence invites an
alternative perspective. For instance,
the League organization could be seen to
exhibit modernizing characteristics.
It adopted a business-oriented bureaucratic
structure. Its single-issue focus re-
flected specialization typical of
contemporary reformist organizations. The
League's nonpartisan stance recognized
the bipartisan nature of temperance
sentiment and allowed it to capitalize
upon such new political techniques as
the initiative-referendum. By
secularizing the prohibition argument the
League established significant links
with the medical and scientific manage-
ment sectors of society. Rather than
retreating from reform, the League could
well argue that prohibition alone could
have profound ameliorative effects
upon corrupt politics, social hygiene,
worker efficiency, and tax-supported
charitable and penal institutions.
University of Kansas Lloyd Sponholtz
First Majority-Last Minority: The
Transforming of Rural Life in America. By
John L. Shover. (DeKalb: Northern
Illinois University Press, 1976. xix +
338p.; illustrations, tables, notes,
appendix, index. $12.50 hardcover; $5.00
paper.)
"Suppose there was a revolution and
no one knew it. Incredible? Impossi-
ble?" (xiii). Taking a long and
hard look at American agriculture, Professor
Shover asserts that such a revolution
has indeed occurred. The cause of this
revolution has been the progress in
technology since 1945. He traces the im-
pact of this new technology on rural
America and describes it as the "Great
Disjuncture," particularly in the
way technology and agribusiness have dis-
placed the small and medium-sized
farmers.
Significant statistics are cited to
justify why this change can be called a
disjuncture. Between 1929 and 1965, more
than 30 million Americans moved
away from farmlands; however, even this
figure is misleading. For example,
the 1970 census classified 26.5 percent
of the population as rural; yet a rural
dweller is not necessarily a farmer. In
fact, only one of five rural dwellers
lives in a farm operator family. But
what is meant by a farm operator? Many
modern farm operators are at best part-timers
who moonlight as much work-
ing in nearby towns and factories as on
their own land. And the reason for all
this change is technology, which
requires fewer farmers.
Again, statistics tell the story: in
1945 one farmer was needed to supply
food for 14.6 people, but by 1969 the
ratio widened to one for-45.3. The
impact has been obvious everywhere in
America and not simply in the grain
belt of the Midwest or the truck and
fruit regions on the east and west coasts.
Even the most traditionally rural region
of the nation, the South, has experi-
enced this revolution. In 1949, less
than 10 percent of the cotton crop was
mechanically harvested; by 1969 over 96
percent was machine picked. As
298 OHIO HISTORY
small producers across the nation turn
to other employments or migrate to the
cities, the disjuncture of rural
communities occurs.
Readers of Ohio History will take
special interest in this volume because
Shover illustrates this evolution with a
case study of a rural Ohio community,
Scioto Township in Delaware County. The
history of the township is traced
from the early 1800s to present, and it
is a sad tale. The population di-
minished in the twentieth century as
agrarian-oriented commerce and rail-
roads deserted the area. The number of
farms in the entire county, including
Scioto Township, declined from 3,073 in
1910 to 1,389 in 1969, as the more
prosperous farmers bought out their
smaller neighbors. The small town of
Ostrander has declined in importance, as
older families drift away. The only
new housing units are mobile
trailer-type homes belonging to blue collar
workers who are attracted to the area
because of the cheap rents and low cost
of living, while commuting the
forty-minute drive to Columbus for employ-
ment in the factories. Meanwhile the old
rural tradition of everyone knowing
their neighbors in the township has been
weakened. As Shover sadly con-
cludes, Scioto Township is no longer a
"community" in that sense.
A thoughtful and perceptive study in
evoking the past, this volume is also a
monument of research and a grim look
into the future. It analyzes past values
and traditions of rural America and
speculates on their meaning in present-
day society. Professor Shover has
assembled a rich array of thought-
provoking material and statistics; and
this volume clearly deserves attention
not only as agricultural history but as
an analysis of what has become of our
modern society.
Texas A&M University David E. Schob
Cleveland: Confused City on a Seesaw.
By Philip W. Porter. (Columbus: The
Ohio State University Press, 1976. xiii
+ 314p.; illustrations, index.
$12.50.)
The publication of Philip W. Porter's Cleveland:
Confused City on a
Seesaw by The Ohio State University Press stands as a welcome
event for
several reasons. Rising costs, conflicting
pressures for higher education
funds, and the usual procedure of
publishing titles with very limited audiences
have combined to make it increasingly
difficult for university presses to bal-
ance their ledgers. This volume, a
memoir by a well-known Ohio journalist,
should appeal to a broader audience than
the usual monograph. Additionally,
the history of journalism has not been
given its due by historians in general
and urban historians specifically.
Philip Porter's book fills some of this void.
Moreover, the work continues a tradition
of Cleveland journalistic memoirs
stretching back to the nineteenth
century.
Applying a now generally accepted theme
among urban scholars to Cleve-
land, Porter asserts that the city of
steeples and smokestacks has suffered
from "political volatility"
and "social fragmentation." The prescriptions of-
fered for these ills are order,
community, and regional government. One
might not be persuaded by Porter's
analysis and arguments and his approach
has many contradictions. Emphasizing and
approving of a power elite model,
Porter ironically calls for middle-class
democracy. He takes as fact the failure
of Cleveland as an ethnic melting pot
without much demographic and histor-
Book Reviews
299
ical proof. This flaw is particularly
glaring when he deals with the history of
blacks whose arrival in Cleveland he
mistakenly places in the post-World War
II era. The value of the book to
scholars lies not in its theme and methodol-
ogy but as primary evidence.
A Cleveland journalist for more than
fifty years, Porter began his career in
1917 as a cub reporter with The
Leader. When that paper consolidated with
the Plain Dealer he worked his
way through the ranks to become executive
editor in 1963. For the past ten years
he has written a column for the Sun
chain of suburban Cleveland weeklies.
Based upon this experience Porter
provides a great deal of historical
"behind the scenes" information which
failed to appear in the day-to-day
columns of the newspaper. The point of
view he brings to political and social
history reflects the view brought to the
daily coverage of events in Cleveland by
the Plain Dealer during his long
tenure. His vignettes of key political
figures and business leaders are reveal-
ing and will prove helpful to students
of Ohio history. Privy to a great deal of
information about Cleveland journalistic
history, Porter skillfully relates the
inner story of the Plain Dealer during
the middle third of the twentieth cen-
tury.
Illustrated mainly with individual
portraits, the book contains only several
good photographs of Cleveland land use
and architecture. This limitation is
unfortunate since Porter adeptly shows
the impact on the entire city of
downtown development on a block-by-block
basis. His discussion of the
evolution of Cleveland's central
business district and its connection to trans-
portation and real estate speculation is
fascinating reading.
A highly readable personal statement,
this volume is a welcome addition to
the history of Cleveland and Ohio.
University of Cincinnati James E. Cebula
V Was for Victory: Politics and
American Culture During World War II. By
John Morton Blum. (New York: Harcourt,
Brace, Jovanovich, 1976. xii+
372p.; notes, index. $12.95.)
Professor Blum's subject is the
relationship between politics and culture.
The book is admittedly episodic and not
intended to offer a general picture of
the United States during the war years
but to focus on certain events illustrat-
ing the ways in which political action
was limited by deeply ingrained cultural
patterns. According to Blum,
reform-mindedness, war-time idealism, and the
sense of a common, cooperative
commitment to the defense of human free-
dom were constrained, compromised, and
undercut by the persistence of
traditional patterns of thought and a
profound desire to maintain business as
usual. Thus, efforts to define the goals
of the war succumbed to Madison
Avenue hucksterism; race riots and the
internment of Japanese-Americans
showed the persistence of racism;
liberal, idealistic political figures like Wen-
dell Wilkie and Henry Wallace were
repudiated by their own political parties;
many businessmen placed profit
maximization before all other goals and
many ordinary Americans yearned above
all to get their hands on the things
they had lacked during the Depression;
American fighting men were deter-
mined simply to survive and return home,
not to make the world safe for
democracy; and many novelists of the war
expressed the view that some men
300 OHIO HISTORY
in American uniforms were no better and
perhaps even worse than the men
we were fighting.
In focusing on American culture's
resistance to change, Blum has unques-
tionably overlooked or underemphasized
certain things which did change: the
increasing militance of blacks, the
growing challenge to racist thinking, and
the heightened commitment to an
internationalist foreign policy. Criti-
cisms like this may be dismissed as
examples of the questionable critical
practice of attacking an author for not
having chosen a different subject, but I
also have more substantial reservations.
Blum's purpose is to examine some
of the connections between politics and
culture, but he spends much more
time talking about politics than
culture. He relies too heavily on publications
like Fortune and The Wall
Street Journal for evidence of contemporary at-
titudes. (Perhaps previous historians
had relied too heavily on publications
like The Nation and The New
Republic, but Blum has overcorrected.) More
generally, while Blum's picture of the
American people being motivated more
by self-interest than by an idealistic
zeal for righting the wrongs of the world
may well be accurate, one might ask when
it was ever different. Blum's refer-
ence to the reformist spirit of Union
soldiers during the Civil War is surely
overdrawn. American idealism was
certainly limited, but, even so, was it not
more prevalent and more powerful than
usual, even during previous periods
of national crisis?
Still, it must be said that Blum has
written a readable, straightforward, and
lucid book which is a valuable addition
to the literature on World War II in
that it serves to remind us of some
important things: how easy it is to over-
emphasize war-time idealism, the extent
to which the supposed conservative
revival of the postwar period was an
expression of ideas and points of view
which were endemic in American society
and, above all, how all of us, includ-
ing historians, can become so fascinated
with how things have changed that
we overlook what persists.
Cleveland State University Thomas L. Hartshorne
Black Ballots: Voting Rights in the
South, 1944-1969. By Steven F. Lawson.
(New York: Columbia University Press,
1976. xii + 474p.; tables, notes,
bibliography, index. $20.00 hardcover;
$6.95 paper.)
The phase of post-World War II Southern
and national history, aptly
termed by C. Vann Woodward as the
"Second Reconstruction," included as
one of its major aspects the black
effort to achieve suffrage in the former
Confederate states. Subjected to
systematic disfranchisement from the 1880s
onward in the form of poll taxes,
literacy and understanding tests, property
qualifications, and ad hoc violence at
the hand of whites, Southern blacks
sank into decades of voting apathy until
the climatic events of World War II.
This struggle, with its emphasis on
democracy's fight against fascism,
awakened the interest of Southern blacks
in the cause of suffrage. Those
serving in the armed forces especially
became cognizant of their legally in-
ferior status at the ballot box. At the
same time Northern blacks and white
liberals accelerated pressure on their
congressmen and senators to work for
Book Reviews
301
Southern black voting rights, aided
immensely by the black voting bloc that
was building in Northern cities.
Professor Lawson's detailed,
painstakingly researched narrative of the be-
ginnings, progress, and final victory of
the black struggle for enfranchisement
in the South approaches definitive
status as an account of this momentous
episode in the history of human rights
in America. His total mastery of the
voluminous subject matter dealing with
black suffrage is evident in his ability
to present a succinct and comprehensible
presentation of an involved, com-
plex, and even convoluted historical
process.
Lawson's account is preoccupied to a
considerable extent with descriptions
of legal battles fought on behalf of
black suffrage, beginning with the pioneer-
ing and continuing efforts of the legal
branch of the National Association for
the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), but also including the less
organized and more spontaneous legal
battles initiated by Southern black or-
ganizations who at times embarrassed the
NAACP with their ventures into
the legal area. Liberal groups such as
the National Committee to Abolish the
Poll Tax were also early entrants into
the suffrage struggle. These combina-
tions of black and white liberals laid
the groundwork of legal action which
was to bear fruit in years to come.
The author's story, however, is
predominately a political saga, to some
extent set on the local and state scene
in Southern areas, but mainly in the
halls of Congress and the office of the
national executive. The slow move-
ment of the state and federal courts
toward the liberalization of Southern
black voting rights was paralleled by
the hesitancy of the Congress in passing
legislation that might offend and
alienate the powerful Southern Democratic
voting clique. The circumstances
surrounding the passage of the Civil Rights
Act of 1957 are described in detailed
fashion by Lawson. President
Eisenhower was both bewildered and
conservative regarding the suffrage is-
sue. Meanwhile, Northern liberals and
Southern moderates maneuvered to
construct a palatable legislative
package acceptable to Southern diehards
against a background of Southern white
intransigence engendered by the Su-
preme Court school integration decision.
While Eisenhower's conservatism provided
a great deal of the cause for the
slow movement of federal agencies on the
suffrage issue, the lack of action
under the Kennedy administration was
more a factor of the "ward-heeling"
politics practiced by the Boston
politico and his brother. As evident from
Lawson's account, John F. Kennedy hid a
ruthlessly pragmatic sense of polit-
ical realism behind a presumably liberal
facade. His contacts with Southern
Democratic conservatives appeared to him
to necessitate a slow pace on civil
rights, including suffrage, while still
exhibiting a forward liberal stance to the
public.
It was really Lyndon Baines Johnson who
provided the final impetus
needed for the promulgation of
legislation ensuring Southern black voting
rights. Lawson rightfully makes the
passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965
the centerpiece of the final section of
his narrative. With the passage and
implementation of this legislation, the
Southern black voter finally became a
viable entity in regional and national
politics. Lawson describes the way this
situation came about in exemplary
fashion.
Wastenaw Community College,
Michigan Norman Lederer
302 OHIO HISTORY
Dean Acheson: The State Department
Years. By David S. McLellan. (New
York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1976.
xii + 466p.; illustrations, notes,
index. $17.95.)
Writing a biography of Dean Acheson
presents certain hazards. Acheson
himself published a massive memoir,
immodestly titled Present at the Crea-
tion, two years before his death in 1971, and the following
year Professor
Gaddis Smith of Yale University came out
with a timely study of Acheson for
the "American Secretaries of
State" series. Nonetheless, the major archival
records relating to Acheson's service in
the State Department remain, for the
most part, closed. The question might
legitimately be asked, then, whether
this is an appropriate time for yet
another study of Harry Truman's fourth,
and most significant, secretary of
state.
Professor David S. McLellan of the
Political Science Department at Miami
University clearly believes that it is,
and after reading his superb new biog-
raphy, I am inclined to agree with him.
McLellan's book is based on more
than a decade of work, including
interviews with Acheson, partial access to
his papers, and extensive research in
primary and secondary sources for the
Truman period. McLellan's archival
sources are, of necessity, incomplete,
but he has supplemented them with
careful attention to the public record of
American diplomacy during the period in
question, a source too often ne-
glected by scholars in their haste to pry loose
documents from the govern-
ment. McLellan's book also represents a
happy alliance of the disciplines of
history and political science thanks to
his interest in the "operational code"
approach to the study of decision-making,
and his effective but unobtrusive
application of this technique to
Acheson.
The result is a book with few surprises,
but one which nonetheless adds a
great deal to our understanding of
Acheson through its detailed analysis of his
personality and policies. McLellan
stresses Acheson's "realistic" approach
to the conduct of international
relations, his sensitivity to the relationship
between ends and means in diplomacy, his
concern with effective administra-
tion and "good form," and his
ambition to educate the American people in
the intricacies of foreign policy. Above
all McLellan emphasizes Acheson's
preference for action over
contemplation, even when the consequences of
such action could not clearly be foreseen.
It was this latter tendency, McLel-
lan argues, that caused Acheson
inadvertantly to contribute to such unfortu-
nate developments as the rise of
McCarthyism (by exaggerating the Soviet
threat for domestic purposes), a limited
war with Communist China (by en-
dorsing MacArthur's decision to cross
the 38th parallel in Korea), and a per-
petuation of Cold War tensions with the
Russians (by concentrating so much
on the construction of anti-Soviet
alliances as to neglect opportunities for
negotiation). Acheson, therefore, does
not emerge from this account wholly
unscathed.
Still, the book is generally sympathetic
to its subject, as befits any good
biography. Acheson's intentions were
good, McLellan argues, and his view
of the world was a reasonable one given
the information available at the
time. There seems little reason to
quarrel with this judgment or with the as-
sertion that this sensitive and
intelligent biography will be the definite work
on Acheson for some time to come.
Ohio University John Lewis
Gaddis
Book Reviews
303
Glory and Despair, Challenge and
Change: The Molders. By James E. Cebu-
la. (Cincinnati: International Molders
and Allied Workers Union, 1976. x
+ 86p.; illustrations, notes, appendix,
index. $2.50.)
Published by the International Molders
and Allied Workers Union and
bearing the imprimatur of the
Union's Research and Education Director, Jim
Wolfe, Glory and Despair is the
latest authorized version of the Union's his-
tory. Reflecting the view of its
creators, this account is primarily a chronolog-
ical narrative of the exploits of the
Molders' top executives.
The author, a professor of history at
the University of Cincinnati, draws on
a small handful of well-worn secondary
sources and the Union's official
documents-Proceedings, Journal, minutes of the Executive Board-to plot
the succession of leadership and the
rollercoaster membership statistics
from the reign of William Sylvis to the
present. Unfortunately, Professor
Cebula has chosen to ignore the
important methodological and intellectual
advances made by the current generation
of labor historians and gives us little
of the richness of historical
development which can be found at the local level
among the rank and file. The brevity of
the book (the text is only seventy-five
pages) may account for this in part, but
the author's extremely limited vision
and narrow use of source material
precluded him from answering the ques-
tions which must be addressed if we are
to understand the history of this
union.
The role of the buck, or Berkshire,
system of employing helpers in the
shop was critical to the evolution of
craft consciousness, control, and unioni-
zation, yet the author dispatches this
issue in three short paragraphs (p.39). In
the conclusion we are told that "in
the early 1970's the International urged
active participation by the local unions
in their respective city and state
AFL-CIO bodies. . . . [and] the Union
for the first time since the Sylvis era,
once again involved itself in political
activism" (pp.73-75). Why, for one
hundred years after Sylvis' death, did
the Molders not work with local labor
organizations or involve itself
politically when almost every other union did?
The answer, of course, is that the union
was involved, but these activities
were not recorded in the minutes of the
International Executive Board.
As an effort to educate its members
about their institutional heritage and to
evangelize for change in the current
union structure, the book has merit. The
graphics interspersed in the narrative
are interesting and the author has been
fair and critical in his assessments of
the International's executives. But
Glory and Despair offers little of value to serious students of Ohio and
American labor history.
The Ohio Historical Society Glen A. Gildemeister